At an event celebrating “Caribbean Queens: Saluting Women Shaping the Future of Caribbean Tourism” Breakfast & Awards event held during Caribbean Week in New York last week, Tourism marketing professional Beverly Nicholson-Doty from the United States Virgin Islands received the “Secretary-General’s Distinguished Service Award.”
Britain’s Steam Dreams Rail Co., which provides unique English countryside tours from London Victoria on a classic steam train, has launched its summer season and will continue with a limited series of weekly departures departing twice daily every Tuesday through Aug. 20.
Famous for its beaches and vibrant parties in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, Rio de Janeiro now has an attraction for winter: humpback whales. The tourism agency of Niteroi, Rio’s sister city across the Guanabara Bay, has launched a whale-watching program that enables tourists to closely observe the mammoth mammals.
Canadians love the beach. And “The Beach” – the nickname adopted by Myrtle Beach, is a huge favourite. This popular destination has been attracting snowbirds and winter escape artists for decades. They love its fine weather, southern hospitality, year-round world-class golf (and mini golf), low-country cuisine, shopping, and, of course, the famed Can-Am Days in March, an annual celebration of the connection between Canada and the South Carolina city.
WestJet guests can now gain direct access to Frankfurt International Airport (FRA) from five Canadian airports through the expansion of WestJet’s long-standing partnership with Condor Airlines. Expanding upon the airlines’ previous interline agreement, WestJet and Condor will codeshare for the first time in their 10-year partnership.
Myrtle Beach is known as the ‘Golf Capital of The World,’ boasting more than 80 championship courses, nearly 2.8 million rounds played annually. But, notably there’s also mini golf, with more than 50 utterly unique and eclectic places to play along the Grand Strand, many of them now accessible through the South Carolina destination’s new Mini Golf Trail.
A water emergency prompted the mayor of Capri – one of Italy’s most popular islands – to order a halt to the arrival of tourists on Saturday, in a crisis that has deprived some areas of any water supply. Without a water supply, it was impossible to guarantee essential services to “thousands of people” who travel to the island daily during the tourist season, Mayor Paolo Falco said.
Visit Myrtle Beach has released a children’s book titled “Splish, Splash, Squawk! Finding Joy in a Sensory-Friendly Vacation.” designed to inspire families with children on the autism spectrum to explore the joys of travelling together. The initiative is the latest addition to an extensive program that the destination is extremely passionate about, according to VMB executives.
June marks the start of Pow Wow season and a host of events will take place across the Canada, some taking place this weekend. Open to all, the powerful gatherings bring together multiple generations in a celebration of food, cultural traditions, community building, and spiritual healing in honour of Indigenous life, culture and traditions.
The names roll off the tongue will familiarity: Venice, Malibu, Santa Monica… The world-famous beach cities of Los Angeles offer sun, sand and surf, along with wellness and outdoor recreation, street art and shopping, nightlife, and some of the best cuisine found in Los Angeles. They also offer another, sometimes unexpected, side of the US’s second largest metropolis, help reduce the city to manageable – and marvellous.
Most visitors – including Canadians – see Hawaii as a safe and secure destination, according to the islands’ latest Visitor Satisfaction and Activity Survey (VSAT), which surveyed visitors from multiple destinations who visited Hawaii in the fourth quarter of 2023. More than 90% of visitors from all markets rated Hawaii as “excellent” or “above average” when it comes to being a safe and secure destination, including 99.0% from Canada.
Olympia, London’s famed events venue – and original home of World Travel Market starting in 1980 – is putting on a new face. The nearly 140-year-old exhibition hall in West Kensington neighbourhood is being redeveloped into the in British capital’s newest cultural and entertainment destination and what is being called a “global landmark.”
If there was only one takeaway for travel advisors from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) event in Burlington, Ont., this week, it was to recognize the overwhelming variety of the destination – a sentiment stated succinctly by Sarah Chensky of MGM Resorts, who said, “There’s a different Vegas for different people.”
A big, round, 4,000-year-old stone building discovered on a Cretan hilltop is puzzling archaeologists and threatening to disrupt a major airport project on the Greek tourist island.
Land of the “pura vida,” natural Costa Rica is a consistently top destination for Goway, with the popular Central American country favoured by clients alongside Peru in Latin America, as well as ranking in the tour company’s top 10 globally.
Once a shrine to the world’s most popular soft drink, the building that housed the original World of Coca-Cola is going flat at the hands of Georgia’s state government. Crews are demolishing the onetime temple of fizz in downtown Atlanta near the state capitol, with plans to convert the site to a parking lot.
One of Canada’s most prominent museums is reopening after an 18-month upgrade for retrofitting that would allow it to survive a once-in-2,500-year earthquake. The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia’s campus in Vancouver reopened to the public yesterday (June 13) with two new exhibits, along with a $40-million upgrade on the building originally opened in 1976.
The annual rainy season has arrived with a deluge in much of Florida, where a disorganized disturbance of tropical weather from the Gulf of Mexico has caused street flooding and triggered tornado watches, but so far has not caused major damage or injuries.
In 1964, Universal City Studios invited tourists to take a whirlwind adventure for a first-hand look at Hollywood moviemaking in action. Five times a day, for approximately just over two hours, Monday through Friday, iconic red and white Glamour Trams, with their ruffled awnings, would whisk eager tourists through its studio backlot to be a fly on the wall in the making of Universal movie and television productions. Since then, over 200 million visitors have experienced the now iconic Los Angeles-area attraction.
Tahiti is preparing for its moment in the sun, when the eyes of the world will be on the French Polynesian paradise as it hosts the surfing competition for this summer’s Olympic Games. An overseas territory of France, the island seemed like a more natural setting for the competition than landlocked Paris.
On Jan. 19, 1874, Winnipeg’s first city council met. Back then, the main attraction for the city’s nearly 2,000 inhabitants was a large muddy road connecting a handful of roughly assembled wood houses, along with the stone gate of Upper Fort Garry. Fast forward 150 years, and now visitors will find a host of world-class attractions, performance groups, sports facilities, gardens, cultural centres, and vibrant neighbourhoods – and a pretty stylish park surrounding the Fort.
While the communities of Greater Phoenix attract much of the attention in Arizona, nearby Tuscon has its own unique allure, not least over 300 days of sunshine a year and winter temperatures that are guaranteed to appeal to Canadian snowbirds and vacationers eager to escape the cold up north.
With Santa Monica having been a key partner at the recent IPW travel trade show – the destination dubbed LA’s “beach city” was the site of after-show festivities for delegates, including Canadian attendees, over the course of two nights – the timing was right last week for Team Santa Monica to follow up with their annual Canadian mission to engage and update the trade in this country on the latest happenings in the SoCal destination.
Visitors injected billions of dollars into Toronto’s economy last year, a new study finds, but tourists have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels amid signs of slowing growth. Some 26.5 million visitors arrived in 2023 and spent $8.4 billion – the bulk of it on hotels, restaurants and transportation – according to a report from Tourism Economics.
Brand USA, the face of US Travel abroad, came calling in Canada this week, continuing its commitment to the US’s top international market and the trade that fuels it. Events were planned for Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary, with the centrepiece being a day-long event designed to connect tour operators and the media from this country with a delegation comprised fully of 30 destination reps from across the US.
For a few moments the sky over Normandy, France, seemed to bleed. A helicopter, camouflaged to match the blue horizon, hovered over the beach at Courseulles-sur-Mer, dropping poppies. First in bursts of red clouds, then spread out on the breeze, like blood droplets dispersed in water. Each blood-red flower represented a Canadian killed in World War II. In all, 48,000 poppies fluttered onto the beach, building and crowd below.
In conjunction with the return of seasonal service between Toronto and Salt Lake City, the Utah Office of Tourism (UOT) raised the curtain at a series movie-themed “Matinee & Mingle” events for the trade in Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto last week celebrating “100 years of film” in the state – including famous flicks like “Footloose” and “Thelma & Louise.”
With a colourful Jamaican vibe and a reggae beat – not least at the Sandals closing night gala beach party – the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) held its 42nd annual Caribbean Travel Marketplace in Montego Bay last week, attracting approximately 1,200 international delegates from 25 countries (including many Canadians) to the region’s “most important” event, which proved to be the largest since 2007, and similarly the biggest in the region since the pandemic, eclipsing last year’s gathering in Barbados.
More Canadians are visiting Britain – and spending – than ever before, according to the latest official statistics highlighted by Britain’s national tourism agency, VisitBritain. Canada’s appetite for travel to Britain is surging with more than 1 million Canadian (1,003,000) visits in 2023, up 12% over 2022 and an increase of 15% since 2019, the year before the pandemic.
In recognizing the importance for travellers to travel sustainably, The Travel Corporation (TTC) family of brands (among them Trafalgar, Insight and Contiki) has introduced a downloadable checklist designed to help clients (and those who book them) become more responsible travellers, ultimately helping to protect and make a positive impact on the planet, its people, and wildlife.